


mischievous and polyamorous

by mugsandpugs



Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Curses, Depression, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, Dysfunctional Family, Eye Trauma, F/M, Forbidden Love, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Secret Relationship, Some Mine/Hatori too, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: The Jyuniishi are not permitted to fall in love.Naturally, Ayame does it twice.Incomplete and discontinued.
Relationships: Kuramae Mine/Sohma Ayame, Sohma Ayame/Sohma Hatori
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

_Hyphaema,_ noun: The pooling or collection of blood inside the anterior chamber of the eye. If left untreated, hyphaema can cause permanent loss of vision.

Fact: Men are statistically twice as likely to sustain an eye injury than women.  
  
Conjecture: They usually don't do so as punishment for proposing marriage.  
  
Fact: Hatori Sohma stitched the corner of his left eye by himself. It was just easier that way. Less of a fuss. Six neat black sutures marching at a downward slant from his _orbicularis oculi_ to his slashed nasolacrimal duct.

If healed properly, his eyelid mayn't even droop. Not noticeably, anyway. Hatori, like 72% of the population of Japan, had prominent epicanthical folds. Said folds were unlikely to fully match once the stitches were removed. 

Shigure held the mirror for him while he worked. When he was finished, the dog turned away from him and vomited into Hatori's bonsai plant. _"Fuck,_ Ha'ri..."

Hatori reached into his desk and withdrew a peppermint candy, which he passed to his cousin. "It should ease the nausea," he informed him. "Or at least improve your breath."

...

Fact: Hatori Sohma was smashed in the face with a 3.17kg vase.

Fact: Hatori Sohma pulled a shard of ceramic from his own eye socket.

Fact: Crying with a ripped tear duct hurts like a sonuvabitch.

The second time it happened, Hatori decided not to cry anymore. That was fine. Good, even. Kana, it seemed, had used up all the tears in the world.

He tried to talk to his former fiancé a time or two after The Incident. The first time, She'd sat up and touched his cheek. She'd tried to smile for him.

A moment later, however, she shifted the patch from his eye and began weeping anew at the sight of his mangled face. "Heartsick," the older Sohmas called it.

"Post-traumatic stress disorder," Hatori replied. No need to romanticize something that could be clinically classified; explained; filed away.

The second time Hatori visited her hospital room, Kana flinched away from him. The fear in her eyes was forceful as a cannonball to the chest.

Hatori flinched, too, stumbling from the doorway. Turning his back on the room. He hurried downstairs and chainsmoked until he was coughing up gray gunk.

The truth was, he'd already decided to erase her memories before Akito even suggested it. Kana had PTSD, and Hatori's face was a major trigger. But so was her own brain. They'd spent months upon months building a relationship together. Most of her memories would have a trace of him attached.

"If she thinks of coffee, she'll think of mugs," he later explained to Shigure. "If she thinks of mugs, she'll think of ceramic. And if she thinks of _that..."_ He points to his covered eye. "Isn't the human brain amazing?"

Shigure barked a humorless laugh at the doctor's sarcasm. "Everything ties back to you, huh? Lucky girl."

The third and final time Hatori visited the love of his life, he covered her eyes with one large hand. His nicotine-stained fingertips were stark against her pallid face; her stringy, greasy hair.

He wanted to carry her to the bath. Wanted to wash her and kiss her and tell her he loved her. Wanted to apologize ten, twenty, a hundred times. _I should have known better. I should never have returned your affections. I shouldn't have let you fall in love._  
  
Instead, he stole the memories from her brain, and then he left his heart behind.

...

Fact: Hydrocodone has been banned in Japan since 1948.

Fact: If one had enough money, one could acquire any substance, banned or otherwise.

Of course, as a doctor, he knew better than to mix the opioids with hard liquor.

He did it anyway. The three-day bender was one of blissful obliviousness.

The Sohma maid who found him screamed, eyes bugging as she regarded the vomit-splattered dragon sprawled on the bathroom floor, soaked in a spreading puddle of his own sweat.

Time seemed to skip, and then Shigure was there, hauling him up and forcing him under the cold shower spray, clothes and all.

"Not that I'm one to talk," Shigure grunted, pinning him against the wall with one hand and peeling off his stained t-shirt with the other, "but you've gotta get your shit together, Ha'ri."

Of course. Hatori Sohma couldn't afford a weekend off, could he? Not even after the world shattered into a million ceramic pieces. Hatori wasn't allowed to fall apart; it was his job to hold everyone else up and stitch them back together. The fact that _Shigure_ was now filling that role for him was almost laughable, if not downright frightening.  
  
"Get _off,_ mutt," Hatori sighed, pushing Shigure out of his bathroom. "I can wash myself. Make yourself useful and brew some coffee."

Shigure looked relieved as he grabbed a towel and squished wetly down the hallway to the kitchen.

It took a lot of time under the freezing water before Hatori began to sober. He knew what he had to do-- drink his weight in water to avoid a hangover. Caffeine to stay awake. Food, because he couldn't remember the last time he'd put solid calories inside his body. He had to knit himself together so well that even shrewd Shigure wouldn't be able to see through the cracks.

Right now, though, he was still trapped in the space between 'victim of domestic violence' and 'tired, overworked doctor who nevertheless has his life under control.'

His unstyled hair dripped, water soaking into the cotton of his pajamas. The fresh patch over his eye was neon green, because he only had children's patches in stock. The adult patches he'd ordered from Tokyo had yet to arrive.

"You look like shit," Shigure said, cheerful and unnecessary. "I ordered takeout."

"Fuck you," Hatori replied dourly. He took the hot mug that was thrust into his hands. "I need a cigarette." Or twenty.

Shigure blessedly didn't lecture him on the dangers of smoking. He simply lit a cigarette, kissed it to the end of another, and passed one to his cousin.

They drank black coffee and smoked together in companionable silence, standing with their backs against the kitchen counter. Slowly, the world stopped spinning. Hatori's eye ached, the pain growing and receding with each throb of his heart.

"Why don't you go stay with Ayame?" Shigure asked, apropos of nothing.

Hatori frowned at him. Shigure was always coming up with hairbrained schemes. "Why would I do that?"

"Because you're a mess, and I'm scared you're going to kill yourself." Shigure sipped his coffee. Ashed his cigarette. He said this in the same tone he did everything else: benign; disaffected.

It was a show, always. Shigure was never as stupid as he pretended to be.

"I'm not going to kill myself," Hatori replied. He pulled the cigarette from Shigure's mouth and stuck it into his own, because he'd already finished his.

Shigure lit up another. "Not on purpose, maybe, but how long would you have laid in your own puke if the maid hadn't found you?"

Hatori didn't answer.

"How many pills would you have swallowed if I hadn't poured the bottle down the sink?"

"You did _what?!_ Shigure, those were expensive--"  
  
"Name the last thing you ate. Or the last time you slept in a bed. Blacking out doesn't count."

Hatori glared, rather than admit he didn't know.

"There you go." Shigure toasted him with his coffee mug. "You're screwed up, and I suck at helping. Aya doesn't. Let him babysit until you know how to be a person again."  
  
The doorbell rang. Shigure went to pay for the takeout he'd ordered, returning to offer Hatori a huge plastic bowl of gyudon.

Hatori only had to take one look at the thin, greasy slabs of beef and onion over sticky clumps of rice for his abused stomach to roil.

He pushed away from Shigure and ran to the bathroom, where he promptly lost all the coffee he'd just consumed.

Shigure appeared in the doorway, watching his lifelong friend hug the toilet. "So anyway," he said, continuing their conversation from before. "I already called Ayame, and he said yes. A driver should be around to pick you up soon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gyudon is actually delicious. It's just not good for someone who's already sick.
> 
> I wanted to start this with "If anyone was meant to date a part-time dragon _and_ his older cousin, it was Mine Kuramae," but I decided to go for a more serious tone.  
> Still makes me laugh, though.


	2. Chapter 2

The guest futon wasn't large enough to accommodate Hatori's long legs, but he hadn't seemed to mind. He'd collapsed onto it anyway, and was asleep before Ayame fluffed the blankets over his back. He hadn't even noticed Mine's presence in the corner, small as she was.

She came forward now, crouching by the older man's head. She carefully arranged the edge of the blanket so that it covered his shoulders, but not his face. When she brushed his hair back, Ayame caught a glimpse of his eyepatch.

"Well," she said, as Ayame struggled to accept the reality of his cousin's new disfigurement. "The rumors are true. He's certainly handsome." She said it with a trace of sadness in her voice. He _was_ handsome, _but._ From now on, there would _always_ be a "but."

"Come," Ayame said, reaching for the cloak of bravado that kept the rest of the world from ever touching him. "Let him dream."

He offered his assistant his hand, which she took. Her skin was so much warmer than his, but then, _everybody's_ was. He hauled her back to her feet.

They left the storage area, where bolts of fabric crowded shelves on the walls, and shut the door behind them. Hatori had stayed here before. He knew where to find the light switch; the bathroom; Ayame's bedroom.

Still holding onto Mine's hand, Ayame closed the shōji behind himself.

Ayame gave her a warm smile that never quite touched his golden eyes. He could fake any emotion under the sun; wear it, magnify it to absurd levels, but he never _could_ fool those who bothered to pay attention.

Lucky for him, precious few ever _did_ bother. Most were content to accept the surface-level theatrics he displayed. Silly snake! Ridiculous, foolish; not a care in the world.

She reached up to take his cheek in her little hand. He remained still, allowing the contact, though it was in his nature as Jyuunishi to resist. Outsiders weren't meant to touch him; not his heart, not his skin.

"I think, my dear," he told her, jaw brushing her wrist. "That a nightcap is in order. Join me?"

She did, pulling up the cushion at his table that he'd started to think of as "her" cushion. They'd had so many dinners together while they waited for Mine's brother to walk her home from work... Oh, it was foolish, Ayame knew. Reckless, even. His heart felt heavy with the conversation they were about to have. It was a conversation about an 'almost.' About a 'could have been.'

Ayame Sohma was not a responsible man. He wasn't a man who put someone else's needs before his own. He was quite a selfish snake, but he was _trying_ to be better. He really was!  
  
Ayame dutifully set out a bottle of fine saké and two tiny, ceramic cups. He handed Mine a bowl of shiokara, two appetizer plates, and two sets of chopsticks with their matching rests.

 _Mine's chopsticks,_ he thought, admiring the delicate bamboo she'd started keeping in his home. They were just chopsticks, after all. It wasn't like she was keeping a spare toothbrush in his bathroom. It didn't have to mean anything.  
  
He poured saké into her cup before his own.

She thanked him with a murmur, placing slivers of shiokara on her plate. She ate so carefully, working not to drop anything on her handmade clothes. She'd woken up that morning and dressed herself like the fantasy of a stewardess; hat, gloves, and all. Ayame loved her for it.

Ayame... _Loved..._

_Hush, you._

Ayame tied his hair back before drinking; snacking. He cleared his throat. Why _now_ were words failing him?

"Kuramae-san," he began.

His assistant gave him a hard look. He hadn't spoken to her so formally since her first day on the job.

"Mine," he amended. "I apologize that you had to see the uglier side of my family tonight."

She said nothing. Her large eyes were the deepest, richest brown he'd ever seen. "Chocolate" wouldn't adequately describe them. They were like the darkest, richest earth. The way the world had been before man's pollution and corruption.

"What happened to Hatori was not an isolated incident," Ayame went on to explain. "Unfortunate things tend to happen in my family. It's all a very... Sensitive, private matter."

"Are you Yakuza?" Mine asked, setting her cup down with a gentle clink. Bringing another bite to her mouth. Had Ayame not been watching closely, he might not have seen the way her hands shook, ever so slightly. He wanted to lie to her. To say that, yes, the Sohma _were_ involved in gang activity. It would be so much easier than explaining the truth.

_You're a better man, now. You don't lie to the ones who matter._

"No, my dear. Anything outside of the law that happens in our blood... Is kept to Sohmas, and Sohmas alone. You have nothing to fear."

Alas. He'd already broken his promise not to lie.

"That's not entirely true," he corrected himself. "There is a chance that further association with me could lead to unfortunate circumstances for yourself, as well."

_Poor, poor Kana..._

"What are you saying, boss?" Mine continued to look him square in the eye. Ayame was a tall man. He was aware of and confident in his beauty; his power. There were plenty who found these traits intimidating. Mine was not among them. She never once quailed under the alien gold of his stare.

Ayame set his chopsticks down. A rarity was occurring: he'd lost his appetite. "I am saying that it is best if you find work elsewhere. I will, of course, serve as a reference. I will write you a glowing letter of recommendation, and ask among my colleagues to find you a strong replacement position. You are talented, you are brilliant, and you deserve more than I can give you."

"You're firing me." Mine's chin set stubbornly, her lips pinching in a tight line. She would not let this pass without a fight. She would force him to say the words.

"I am asking you to leave of your own will," he corrected her. Employees in the precinct could not be "fired' without cause. Not legally, anyway. If Mine tried to take up a court case against the Sohmas, she'd be in even more danger than she was in now.

"Do you _want_ me to leave?"

Ayame could lie. He knew it. He was very good at it. He could hold her gaze and spin the cruelest, coldest rebuttal, and he could do so with a smile on his face. He could break even her iron heart to pieces. But...

"I... No. But I wish to keep you away from..." _Why sugar-coat it?_ "From those who own me."  
  
"I see." Her eyes continued to scrutinize his face, searching for answers she would not find.

"I can't directly protect you from them," Ayame warned. The truth, when shaped a certain way, could hurt more than any lie. "If they walked in right now with the intent to harm you, I would not stand in their way. I _could_ not."

Careless, perhaps, but he truly hadn't anticipated that he would feel more deeply for her than was appropriate. Why should he have? She was cute, certainly, but the world was full of attractive people. It wasn't her body, but her mind that so fascinated him. That kept him coming back.

She didn't flinch. Didn't even pale. Her hand again gave a small tremor, but it didn't so much as slosh the sakè in her cup. She was taking him seriously, he saw. She would choose her own safety, and he was glad for it. He would hire a dull male assistant this time, and all would be well, for as long as Akito allowed Ayame to keep this job.

He was glad to have met this woman. He would never forget her; not for as long as he lived.

"Boss, do you like me?"

How he appreciated bluntness. Those that feared asking the questions that mattered were tiresome time-wasters. "I do. Very much."

"Do you feel for me what I feel for you?"

Ayame's heart skipped. A schoolboy's reaction; one he thought he'd long since grown out of, if ever he'd had it in the first place. "And what might that be?"

"You know what it is. A 'possibility.' A 'maybe.' I think I might someday love you, if we gave this spark a chance to grow."

If Ayame wasn't literally cold-blooded, he might have blushed. Never had he ever met someone as direct, as blunt, as himself. It was--

(charming, darling, perfection)

\-- it was terrifying.

"I do. But I also know that it would be foolish to nurture such a spark. I will never belong to you, Mine. Hatori could not belong to his beloved, and he suffered for it. We would be inviting the same violence to ourselves, if we let this go on. I am... Frightened. I don't want that to happen to us."

Mine reached across the table. He loved her hands, plain and unglamorous as they were. She kept her nails short, rounded, unpolished, for all her work with needle and thread. There was a permanent callus on her right middle finger from the constant run of yarn against skin. All ten of her fingers had tiny pinprick scars from untold numbers of straight-pins. These were the hands of an artist. They were smaller, feminine versions of Ayame's own.

She did not take his hand. She simply let hers rest, inviting him to reach out.

"I want you," she said. "I want us. If you ask me again, I will quit. And I will not wait for you to come chasing after me. But you need to know what I want, first."

He stared at her hand.

On the mantel, his antique, windup clock ticked softly.

Thirty ticks passed before Mine closed her fingers and started to retract it.

Swift as a striking snake, Ayame lunged across the table and seized it. "I want you," he said. "More than I've ever wanted anything."

There was not a hint of bravado, of theatrics in his voice now. He was naked and raw and exposed; a pathetic, fearful little thing. 

Mine laced their fingers together, her little hand so warm in his cold one. She rubbed his knuckles with her thumb. "Okay," she agreed, sounding a little dazed. She swallowed and nodded. "Alright, boss. We're a team now, right?"

"Now and forever, if you wish it."

"Teams are honest. They trust each other. I need you to tell me what is happening with you. With your cousin. What is it that I am now in danger _of?"_

She was right, of course. She was _always_ right.

"I will tell you," he agreed, nodding. "And I will show you. In order to do so, I first need to embrace you. Please excuse my forwardness."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My friend: is Mine gonna stay?  
> Me: Of course. That snooty (snake booty) ain't gonna peg itself.  
> My friend: ... I'm gonna hang up, now.


	3. Chapter 3

Hatori woke to the clink of a mug on a wooden block. He opened his eye in time to see Ayame's retreating back.

"Aya," he croaked, and the snake stopped. Turned to regard him over his shoulder. In concession to the warm weather, he wore only a woman's kimono-style bathrobe, violently purple in color.

The mug Ayame had set on a coaster by Hatori's pillow continued to steam; hot green tea. Hatori sat up to sip it. Ayame always made it fresh, proper, beating the matcha at the correct temperature with a little wooden brush.

Hatori sat up and held the mug between his palms, bathing his face in the steam and sipping.

After a moment, Ayame approached. He sat gracefully on the end of the guest futon, his long legs folding beneath him. He rested a hand on his friend's knee, through the lump of his blanket.

"Would you like a bath, mon ami?" Ayame asked, which was a polite way of saying 'gee, Hatori; you smell like a rotting corpse.'

He didn't get up to leave right away; simply sat and watched Hatori sip his tea. The dragon had always found Ayame beautiful first thing in the morning; no makeup, hair mussed, eyes soft. Dawn light smoothed his harsher edges.

That wasn't the sort of thing men ought to think about their cousins, however many times "removed" they might be. Hatori cleared his throat. Tried to be personable. "Will you and miss Kuramae be working today?"

Ayame shook his head, a slithery rope of silver-white hair falling over his arm. "We've closed for the day. We thought you needed the quiet."

Hatori felt a pang of guilt at that. "I don't mean to interfere in your work--"

"Good thing we didn't give you a choice, then, non?"

Hatori sighed, long-suffering. "Aya."

"Ha'ri."

Stubborn men, the both of them.

Ayame stood, lightly touching the top of Hatori's head as he left the "guest" (storage) room. A moment later, Hatori heard the faint rumble of plumbing; a tub filling.

He finished his tea and stood, procuring a change of clothes from the bag Shigure had packed for him. He crossed to the bathroom and shut off the tap before the deep tub could overfill.

Ayame had added salts to the water, Hatori saw, when he stripped and climbed in. It smelled faintly of roses, and soothed his sore skin. He sighed again; this time in pleasure. Steam tangled with his dark hair, curling it.  
  
From the kitchen, Hatori heard dicing. Blending. Sizzling. Was Ayame preparing breakfast? It was a funny thought-- the both of them, largely ignored by their parents, had been raised in the type of luxury that required no chores on their part. They'd reached adulthood without the faintest idea how to cook, wash, or maintain anything domestic. Ayame had learned to sew for art; not necessity.

Sometimes Hatori thought that by moving out on his own, Ayame had saved his own life. What chance did Hatori have on _his_ own if--

 _If._ It wasn't worth pursuing that thought. He would always have, would always _belong_ to, the Sohma. A Snake was expendable. A Dragon was not. Akito would never let him go.

It wasn't the most hygienic to sit in his own dirty bath water, but Hatori didn't have the strength to stand and shower off. Instead, he carefully washed and rinsed his hair, pouring a cup of water over his head until all the suds ran out.

He used a cloth to carefully dab at his face, avoiding the stitches, and then washed the rest of his body.

By the time he'd climbed, donned a fluffy towel, and drained the tub, his energy had ran out. He sat on the edge of the tub, staring blankly at the draining suds as they popped.

There came a tap on the door. "Ha'ri?"

"Come in."

Ayame did, regarding him with concerned golden eyes. "Silly man. Your hair will dry tangled if you leave it like that."

Hatori remained still as Ayame fetched a comb from a drawer and sat beside him, tilting Hatori's head down to comb his hair out. When Hatori's un-patched eye was revealed, Ayame went very stiff, no doubt staring at the stitches; the fresh, jagged cut.

A small shiver-- of horror? Disgust?-- wracked the snake. Hatori turned his head away. "It's not as bad as it looks."

Ayame didn't argue. A moment later, he resumed combing.

From the kitchen, the fish grill beeped. Ayame set the comb down and got up to set the table. He must've had some suspicions to how exhausted Hatori really was, because he said, "Please join me for breakfast. You can go back to sleep after that."

Hatori nodded, but it still took him forever and a day to stand and dress and hang his towel to dry. He knew he was depressed, but it seemed unfair that his mental state had such a physical impact.

He put his eyepatch back on and found Ayame knelt at the kitchen table, a novel propped open against his water glass.

Hatori knelt on the cushion across from him, regarding the rice and vegetables and grilled mackerel waiting to be consumed. "Is that Shigure's newest?" he asked, inclining his head towards the novel.

"Yes; another bodice-ripper. Terrifically bawdy."

Hatori snorted. Reading the lurid erotica written and published by their friend and cousin at the breakfast table seemed a perfectly Ayame-style thing to do. He stirred the steaming bowl of miso with a spoon, finding he had no apatite.

Because Ayame was watching him, he took a bite anyway. It tasted good. It smelled good. And still, he didn't want any of it.

"Ha'ri, mon ami," Ayame said softly. "We haven't had a chance to talk since... Since everything happened. I want you to know you're not alone. That it's alright-- we'll get through this together. The Mabudachi Trio leaves no man behind!"

Hatori felt a pang of irritation, of anxiety, beneath his numb veneer. He didn't need a grown man to babysit him. To coddle him like he was a child crying over a broken toy. He'd nearly had his eye gouged out by pottery before mind-wiping the only "outsider" who'd ever loved him. No; things wouldn't "be alright." No, he would not "get through" this.

To avoid responding, he popped a bite of mackerel into his mouth and chewed thoroughly. The salted fish sat heavy on his tongue, scraping its way down when he swallowed. He felt it hit his empty stomach like a ball of lead.

Ayame's smile turned sad at the edges. "I've annoyed you," he observed. When the hell did he-- he! Noisy, self-involved Ayame!-- become so perceptive of other people? "I do mean it, though. We do love you."

'We'? He and Shigure? Hatori doubted Shigure loved anyone but himself. And he doubted Ayame was ignorant of that fact. Shigure's dangerously scheming mind was a little-known secret the three of them held between them. Just another ugly secret in a family full of them.

Hatori ducked his head, avoiding Ayame's steady gaze. He shovelled a few more bites into his mouth, then stood. "Thank you for breakfast, Aya. I think I need to lie down for a minute."

He didn't wait for answer before returing to the guest closet.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Orion Experience's "Cult of Dionysus." (Ayame would like that song, I think.)
> 
> In addition to the couple Fruba fics I've written on this account, you can find some on my original ff(dot)net account [here.](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1753110/darkbloodylegs) They're not all quality, but us fandom grandmas gotta toot our own horns somehow, yeah?


End file.
